ered round the scene; but though they saw the seven
shillings given away they asked for no relief to themselves, they
recognized in their sad wild way the other greater wretchedness, and
made room in silence for Dickens to walk on.

Not more tolerant of the way in which laws meant to be most humane are
too often administered in England, he left in a day or two to resume his
_Little Dorrit_ in Paris. But before his life there is described, some
sketches from his holiday trip to Italy with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr.
Augustus Egg, and from his three summer visits to Boulogne, claim to
themselves two intervening chapters.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] I subjoin the dozen titles successively proposed for _Bleak
House_. 1. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined House;" 2. "Tom-all-Alone's. The
Solitary House that was always shut up;" 3. "Bleak House Academy;" 4.
"The East Wind;" 5. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined [House, Building,
Factory, Mill] that got into Chancery and never got out;" 6.
"Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House where the Grass grew;" 7.
"Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House that was always shut up and never
Lighted;" 8. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined Mill, that got into Chancery
and never got out;" 9. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House where the
Wind howled;" 10. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined House that got into
Chancery and never got out;" 11. "Bleak House and the East Wind. How
they both got into Chancery and never got out;" 12. "Bleak House."

[170] He was greatly interested in the movement for closing town and
city graves (see the close of the 11th chapter of _Bleak House_), and
providing places of burial under State supervision.

[171] The promise was formally conveyed next morning in a letter to one
who took the lead then and since in all good work for Birmingham, Mr.
Arthur Ryland. The reading would, he said in this letter (7th of Jan.
1853), "take about two hours, with a pause of ten minutes half way
through. There would be some novelty in the thing, as I have never done
it in public, though I have in private, and (if I may say so) with a
great effect on the hearers."

[172] Baron Tauchnitz, describing to me his long and uninterrupted
friendly intercourse with Dickens, has this remark: "I give also a
passage from one of his letters written at the time when he sent his son
Charles, through my mediation, to Leipzig. He says in it what he desires
for his son. 'I want him to have all interest in, and to acquire a
knowledge o